differences in ability Michael Kinsley has written a strange little piece on the ADA:

For millions of years until the ADA was enacted in 1990, discriminating in favor of ability was thought to be a good thing. It still is, most of the time. Employers prefer competent employees to incompetent ones. Sports fans unabashedly show more enthusiasm for more talented athletes. Music enthusiasts shamelessly buy concert tickets for superior performers. Innate ability isn't the only ingredient, but without it even practice, practice, practice won't get you to Carnegie Hall.

Since Kinsley thinks it's "a good thing" most of the time, you'd expect him to support it. You'd be wrong:

discrimination based on ability usually does make sense. That doesn't make it right.

Why?

rewarding differences in ability is unfair.

It's "unfair" that talented software engineers make hundreds of thousands of dollars more than I do. It's "unfair" that Andre Agassi gets paid big money to play tennis while I have to wait in line just to get a court. It's "unfair" that people pay $100 for tickets to see the Eagles in concert but won't even throw a few cents into my guitar case. And, of course, it's "unfair" that Kinsley got to edit Slate while I only get to write for a blog. If this sounds ludicrous, well, that's because it is. It's hard to imagine that anything is "fair" is Kinsley's world. So what's his point?

the instinctual popularity of the ADA suggests that Americans are more radical believers in equality than they realize.

Let me run that by you one more time. The ADA embodies a strange notion of "fairness" ("to each regardless of his ability") that seems like it would be massively unpopular if stated outright. And yet the ADA has widespread support. Kinsley concludes that his weird egalitarianism is more popular than you'd think. But a much more plausible conclusion is that most people don't think through (or care about) the implications of their political beliefs. Which is less surprising, but not necessarily less distressing.